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Fools, Frauds and Firebrands: Thinkers of the New Left Hardcover – December 8, 2015

by Roger Scruton (Author)
4.2 out of 5 stars 37 customer reviews
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Product Details

  • Hardcover: 304 pages
  • Publisher: Bloomsbury USA; F First Edition edition (December 8, 2015)
  • Language: English
  • ISBN-10: 1408187337
  • ISBN-13: 978-1408187333
  • Product Dimensions: 5.8 x 1 x 8.5 inches
  • Shipping Weight: 1.6 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
  • Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (37 customer reviews)
  • Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #146,022 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Top Customer Reviews

5.0 out of 5 starsIt can be a bit esoteric (as is often the case with explanations of abstract concepts) but this is highly recommended for those
By David Eaton on January 13, 2016
Format: Hardcover Verified Purchase
I'm relatively new to Srcuton's work but I have found him to one of the more insightful and well-researched essayists on matters philosophy--- especially the specious attitudes of "the new left." The chapter "Culture Wars Worldwide" is especially coruscating. His explanations of Gramsci, Said and their methods regarding how to gain control via authoritarianism (whether fascist or communist) is a fascinating study in how the current culture wars are playing out. The seeds or resentment and discontent were being sowed long ago and Scruton's exposure of this "nonsense" is badly needed. Others (Camille Paglia, Bruce Bawer, Scott Thronton, Allan Bloom, e.g.) have weighed in on this as well, but Scruton's philosophical background makes for compelling reading. It can be a bit esoteric (as is often the case with explanations of abstract concepts) but this is highly recommended for those who want to look beyond the current media commentariate for deeper understandings of why things are happening as they are. No one has all the answers (as Scruton readily admits), but there's a great deal to chew on in this book.
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5.0 out of 5 starsA Serious and Important Book
By Richard B. Schwartz TOP 1000 REVIEWERVINE VOICE on February 22, 2016
Format: Hardcover
This is an impressive and important book. Roger Scruton accepts the task of investigating the thought of a number of prominent 20thc leftist intellectuals, paying particular attention to the writings of Eric Hobsbawm, E. P. Thompson, Ronald Dworkin, Jacques Lacan, George Lukacs, Sean-Paul Sartre, Slavoj Zizek, Jurgen Habermas and Michel Foucault, with shorter examination of Edward Said and a short-short mention of Jacques Derrida.

This is a very difficult task because many of these writers have voluminous bibliographies and write with a lugubrious, sometimes impenetrable style (the near totalizing ‘abstraction’ of which leads to a set of key points). A prominent literary critic once compared a task such as this to fighting with Joel Chandler Harris’ tar baby. If you engage with the shape-shifting beast you may never come out again. On the other hand, you cannot engage with it without reading these writers’ works, lest you be called a dilettante, a ‘vulgar conservative’, or all manner of other ugly names. Scruton is none of these, but he is very brave and tenacious to suffer through the volume of material which is here under investigation.

His bottom line is that there are many common threads here, nearly all of which begin with Marx, sometimes as adumbrated by Hegel or filtered through such a shared teacher as Alexandre Kojeve. Scruton is fair in recognizing that some of these individuals’ works are impressive intellectual accomplishments, even if their conclusions are ultimately antinomian. He argues, very impressively, that many of these individuals have invented new ways of saying the same old thing. They have enlisted linguistics, epistemology, psychology, sociology, communication theory, etc.Read more ›
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5.0 out of 5 starsAt Last! We Have an Antidote!
By Ian Kluge on January 20, 2016
Format: Hardcover Verified Purchase
This book is essential for those who want two things: (1) a critical overview of new left thinking and (2) specific well-explained reasons why new left thinking is logically untenable and/or a smorgasbord of inanities and platitudes - or in some cases, no more than an intellectual prank. (Lacan, Deleuze and often Foucault with his 'histories'). Scruton does an excellent job in pointing out key difficulties in their work, and in clearly explaining why - in one way or another - the nature and extent of their flaws. I especially like his blunt spoken ways i.e. no weasel words, that so often mar philosophical books by academics. What makes this book especially important is that so many of these non-sensical ideas have trickled down the street level, especially to students who adopt them with a great deal of passion but very little understanding and/or life-experience. Scruton's book is a perfect antidote against such neocortical poison because it effectively combines background knowledge with incisive analysis. If I were still teaching, I would use this book in my classroom.
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5.0 out of 5 starsThis update to an older Scruton book includes new pieces ...
By S. Hayward on December 10, 2015
Format: Hardcover Verified Purchase
This update to an older Scruton book includes new pieces on current leftist celebrities such as the egregious Slavoj Zizek (worth the price of the book just for this essay). Scruton's extraordinary range is on full display in this lively collection, as is the charming manner in which he wears his deep learning lightly.
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5.0 out of 5 starsExcellent critique
By JSM on December 17, 2015
Format: Kindle Edition Verified Purchase
I applaud the author for his scholarship and the effort he put into reading so much meaningless work. After reading this book I will be more able to articulate my own observations. Being a conservative is a difficult task. Now I can explain more clearly why the emperor has no clothes.
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5.0 out of 5 starsThe best book I know of to introduce readers to recent ...
By Hoodlum on February 5, 2016
Format: Hardcover Verified Purchase
Incisive, erudite, accessible, and compelling!

The best book I know of to introduce readers to recent events in literary theory, cultural relativism, and the intellectual history of the twentieth century. This work unmasks the pretensions of the Left in clear, well-informed, literate prose. It provides excellent summaries and analyses of the work of Dworkin, Foucault, Habermas, Derrida, Rorty, Deueuze, Gramsci, E. P. Thompson, Lacan, Marx, Freud, and others. Useful, valuable, necessary. The discussion on pp. 200-201 of the affinities between communism and fascism is worth the price. For anyone interested in the history of capitalism, socialism, political economy, and the academy in the last one hundred years, this book is a must-read. It is a work not of critique only but more importantly of affirmation. It will give you new confidence as a member of bourgeois society and a participant in democratic capitalist society, with all its crucial mediating institutions and treasured little platoons.
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Most Recent Customer Reviews

4.0 out of 5 starsoften brilliant, but not easy reading

Important book, very thorough, often brilliant, but not easy reading.

Published 4 days ago by Peter Samuel
5.0 out of 5 starsMarx's Intellectualoids

This is a scathing indictment (and fairly comprehensive overview) of the puppets and front spokespersons of the heathen Marxist/socialist/communist hydra-headed beast that writhes... Read more

Published 28 days ago by Joseph C.
5.0 out of 5 starsFive Stars

Both informative and entertaining. The insights of a penetrating mind in prose finery!

Published 1 month ago by Linguophile
3.0 out of 5 stars“Fool, Frauds and Firebrands” by Roger Scruton

A critique of New Left writing by a conservative British writer whose academic career was destroyed by the firestorm of protest from the academic Left that greeted a previous such... Read more

Published 1 month ago by weston
1.0 out of 5 starsUnreadable nonsense, unless you are inclined to agree

This is very much the sort of book that you have to be inclined to agree with to find worth reading, otherwise it is unreadable nonsense. Read more

Published 1 month ago by doug korty
5.0 out of 5 starsI loved this book

I loved this book. Scruton is remarkably fair to those he criticizes and tries to find redeeming features of their work. Read more

Published 2 months ago by Deardon
4.0 out of 5 starsA good book, difficult to get thru

A difficult book to get thru, as the material is very abstract, but Scruton does a very good job of demonstrating the far left's lack of rigor in their Marxist positions. Read more

Published 2 months ago by Brett Norton
5.0 out of 5 starscredo quia absurdum

Liberation! Roger Scruton casts Immanuel Kant (1724-1804) as both hero and villain in Fools, Frauds, and Firebrands, an examination of the philosophical architecture that made... Read more

Published 2 months ago by Jason Bowden
1.0 out of 5 starsA neoconservative gadfly writes what amounts to a hatchet job ...

A neoconservative gadfly writes what amounts to a hatchet job on leftist thinkers -- what could possibly be wrong with that!

Published 2 months ago by Janet C.
5.0 out of 5 starsHe's particularly good on the fraud pulled off by French so-called...

A must-read. He's particularly good on the fraud pulled off by French so-called thinkers like Derrida and Lacan. Read more

Published 3 months ago by Lee

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